Star Trek Discovery episode 4 review

Ok, so Burnham is kind of settling down to the new reality on board the Discovery. In addition to being assigned crew quarters she’s even been given a uniform out of the replicator (or fabricator or whatever the 23rd century version of a replicator is). Although they have neglected to give her a rank and there’s a missing Starfleet badge. Mmm… Story arc methinks… bet there will be a badge there in a few episodes time…

In walks Tilly with a package for Burnham. It’s only the last will and testament of the late captain Georgiou. Burnham recoils as if burned.

In the turbolift there’s my main man Saru surprised to see Burnham. Seems he didn’t get the memo that she wasn’t going to be on the prison shuttle. Captain Lorca shows her his menagerie (as I call it) and tells her to get to work on researching the spore drive, specifically how did the USS Glenn get it to work.

Remember the CGI beastie from last week? Tory from Battlestar has the very clever idea of letting it out of its containment box and trying to cut its claws off.

Guess what… Tory is toast.

Actual Tory shaped toast. With added claw marks.

I though the cool looking sickbay would heal her but no. She is an ex-Tory and is departed. Wow. I was sure Tory would be a slightly confrontational regular character going forward.

No one is safe.

So Burnham does her thing and works out the creature not a predator after all and only defends itself when threatened. Also it has some sort of relationship with the spores. Hand wave. No, I don’t understand it.

In any event they work out how to use the creature to make the spore drive work and this lets them rescue a Federation facility on a dilithium planet from some attacking Klingons. But only Burnham has the empathy to see the creature is suffering.

Side note 1: When they turn on the spore drive the saucer section of the ship does a very cool spinning thing. That’s new.

Side note 2: The “using creature cruelly to power spaceship” was done in a 2010 episode of Doctor Who. True story.

Meanwhile in the Klingon spaceship graveyard where the battle of the binary stars took place we meet our Klingon friends as they attempt to fix the ship crippled by captain Georgiou. More Klingons turn up as they want the ship fixed and in operation as it’s the only one that can cloak apparently. They make off with the ship and leave the torchbearer Klingon in the ruins of the Shenzhou. Interesting. Is he going to fix the Shenzhou?

Side note 3. Apparently the Klingons ate the dead Captain Georgiou. Like actually ate, not a figure of speech. Ew.

Back on the discovery Burnham finally gets the courage to open up the Georgiou box. A holographic message plays saying Burnham is like a daughter to her. Aw. And she probably is a captain by now. Oops. As I predicted inside the box is the telescope from Georgeau’s ready room on the Shenzhou.

So overall another good episode, although I didn’t like it just as much as the first three. I’m still intrigued to see where this is going.